Preparation and Presentation of the Exhibition of 28 April
1958 at Iris Clert, 3 rue des

Beaux-Arts, Paris.

The Specialization of Sensibility from the Status of Raw
Material into Stabilized Pictorial

Sensibility

PNEUMATIC PERIOD:

The object of this endeavor: to create, establish, and
present to the public a palpable pictorial state in the limits of a picture
gallery. In other words, creation of an ambience, a genuine pictorial climate,
and, therefore, an invisible one. This invisible pictorial state within the
gallery space should be so present and endowed with autonomous life that it
should literally be what has hit her to been regarded as the best overall
definition of painting:

RADIANCE.

To this end, then, we compose with Iris Clert the invitation
card to the opening. The text is by Pierre Restany. This brilliantly laconic
text is very clear and we decide, in view of the importance of this exhibition
for the history of art, to have it engraved on informals in London script, for
the sake of solemn ceremony and especially so that the blind can read it. (They
are all that blind!) The ink used will be blue, obviously, painted on white
cards.

This method, which seems to smack of Symbolism, is really not
that, since in fact everything happens in space. It provides a fitting foretaste
of what the exhibition will be: in actuality a space of Blue sensibility in the
frame of the whitened walls of the gallery. (This sensitive body contains Blue
blood.) A decision is also made to send out the invitations in envelopes bearing
the formidable blue stamp of the blue period of the previous year.

Thirty-five hundred invitations are sent, 3,000 of them in
Paris alone. We decide also to add a sort of free entry card, stipulating that
without this special little card the price of admission will be $3.00 per person.

The Galerie Iris Clert is a very small room, it has a show
window and an entrance on the street. We will close the street entrance and make
the public enter through the lobby of the building. From the street it will be
impossible to see anything but Blue, because I will paint the window glass with
blue. The canopy will be Blue too.

On Saturday morning at 8 A.M., I set to work in the gallery.
I have 48 hours in which to paint the gallery room, all alone a stark white.

The nite of the show:

At 8 P.M. I go to La Coupole to get the blue cocktail
prepared especially for the exhibition.

At 9 P.M. Arrival of the members of the Garde Republicans, in
full dress uniform arrive. I immediately offer them a Blue cocktail. They take
up their post under the canopy at the entrance, standing at attention.

At 9:30 P.M. The place is jammed. Outside, the growing crowd
begins to have difficulty getting inside.

At 9:45 P.M. Restany arrives, accompanied by his wife.

At 9:50 P.M. Inside the gallery, I notice a young man drawing
on one of the walls. I rush over to him, stop him, and politely but firmly ask
him to leave. He is literally uprooted and disappears in the clutches of the
guards.

At 10:00 P.M. The police arrive in 3 wagons.

At 10:10 P.M. Twenty-five hundred to 3,000 people are in the
street; the police are trying to push back the crowd. The police demand and
explanation as to why $3.oo is being charged to see nothing. (some people,
furious at having paid the $3.oo went to complain to the police)

At 10:20 P.M. Arrival of the representative of the Order of
Saint Sebastian in full regalia arrive.

At 10:30 P.M. The Gardes Republicans leave in disgust; for an
hour students from the Beaux-Arts have been tapping them familiarly on the
shoulder and asking them where they rented their costumes, and if they are movie
extras!

At 10:50 P.M. The supply of blue cocktail now having been all
consumed, cause a rush to La Coupole to get more. Arrival of two pretty Japanese
girls in extraordinary kimonos.

At 11:00 P.M. The mob, which had been dispersed by the police
and the firemen returns, in little exasperated groups. Inside everything is
still swarming.